Bella, Gabe and Josiah

It’s a good thing that today was a snow day. We nearly had a catastrophe… Last night, Pat got his sourdough starter going so here could make bread. He does this regularly. He has a special fancy bread that he loves and every few weeks he makes another batch for his breakfast. Anyway, this morning, after he’d left for work, I saw this: I could literally watch it escaping from the lid, where it was landing on the floor, right next to the heating vent. I ton of the lid and it instantly did that. I moved it to a bowl and cleaned up the mess and all was well. But seriously, if I hadn’t been home? It would have taken over the house, like that plant in Little Shop of Horrors!

We had a massive snow storm. As in, we got 30 inches of snow in 2-3 days. It was crazy. We never get that much snow. In fact, they even canceled school, which also never happens… So, I decided that we should all go sledding. It was a great idea, apart from the fact that there was so much snow and Gabe is still so small that he couldn’t break a trail on the hill and I had to do it for him. It was the first thing I’ve been in a sled by myself in a very long time… It was so much fun. We laughed so hard. Definitely some of the most fun I’ve had in a long time. Also, Gabe tried to start a snowball fight. Um, I am confident that all 8-year-old boys need to be taken down a peg or two by their moms, so I took care of that. No kid of mine is going think they’re going to win a snowball fight against me…

Last week, Gabe had an appointment Seattle, so he and Pat got to have a special day trip. It was a very long day, but the appointment went well and they had fun. They even managed to run into Gram and Gramps at the airport! Meanwhile, Josy and I had a Mommy-Josy date. We got hot chocolate, then we ate McDonalds and watched the Great British Baking Show (his suggestion!). It was a lovely day. It’s really fun to all hang out together, or to hang out with both of the boys, but there’s also something special about hanging out with them one on one. Pat and I have been talking about how we need to make sure that we do that more.

 Clearly they are happy to all be together again…

Pat and I have officially been married for 10 years! Pat’s been planning our 10 year anniversary trip for about 8 years. He wanted to go back to Maui so we could recreate our honeymoon, but when we got to planning it, that trip was cost preventative, so we had to make a new plan. So we went on a cruise to Mexico! We had a wonderful time, just the two of us. The cruise itself was great, except that a lovely storm came through making the boat super rocky, so rocky that even some of the crew was sick. That definitely put a damper on things.

Bella came home for Christmas! It was the first time that she’d been home since she left for Utah nearly a year and a half ago and it was good to all be together for a bit. We didn’t plan too many things. The goal was to just enjoy all being together. She got home late Thursday night, after the votes were in bed. Friday morning, I worked from home. The boys were having a party/not academic day at school, so I let them sleep in and hang out with Bella for a bit in the morning. Then we took them to school and she and I got pedicures. I was going to take her to the boys’ Christmas party for the afternoon, but by lunchtime she was exhausted and needed a long nap to recover from traveling. But when we was up and everyone was home, we had time to play some games. For dinner I made fancy Christmas pasta that I’d bought on a whim a couple of months so. It was very popular. Saturday was another low key day. There was some shopping, surprising a friend, guitar playing and just being together. Oh